Galle Literary Festival 2016

The Galle Literary Festival 2016 was launched at Barefoot Gallery, Colombo 3 on July 28 and the Festival is to be held on January 8 and 9 in Kandy, 14 to 17 in Galle and 23 and 24 in Jaffna.

A Children’s Festival will be held at the Dharmapala Children’s Park, Galle, and programs will also be held in Kandy and Jaffna. Further, the Electric Peacock Festival, partnering the Fairway Galle Literary Festival, will hold events on January 15 and 16, 2016 in Galle and the highlight of the event will be a concert performance at the Moon Bastion Grounds, Galle Fort.

The main sponsor of the Fairway Galle Literary Festival is Fairway Holdings and Jetwing Lighthouse is the hospitality sponsor while the gold partners are Land Rover, Dialog, Colombo Jewelry Stores and Elysium Collection.

Fairway National Literary Award
Fairway Holdings, the Festival’s title sponsor, will be introducing awards to recognize the best novels in Sinhala, Tamil and English and these will be awarded at the Fairway Galle Literary Festival. Novels published in 2014/15 will be eligible to win the prize and entries should be submitted before September 1.

Five publications from each language will be shortlisted and the winners will receive a cash award of Rs 500,000, while the authors of the shortlisted novels will receive Rs 100,000 each. In an attempt to revive creative writing in different geographical areas, Fairway will be holding the awarding ceremony for the best novel in Sinhala in Kandy, best novel in Tamil in Jaffna and the best novel in English in Galle.

DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
The winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature will be awarded at the Fairway Galle Literary Festival on January 16. The winner will receive a cash award of 50,000 US dollars and previous winners include HM Naqvi for Home Boy (in 2011), Shehan Karunatilaka for Chinaman (in 2012), Jeet Thayil for Narcopolis (in 2013), Cyrus Mistry for Corpse Bearer (in 2014) and Jhumpa Lahiri for The Lowland (in 2015).

When the DSC Prize was first introduced in 2010, there were no awards that appreciated or recognized South Asian literature, the Prize founder Surina Narula said. She explained that South Asian literature is important because not only does it make those of the region appreciate their culture but also aids those living in other parts of the world explain their culture to non-South Asians. Thus while South Asian literature is of great importance, it wasn’t appreciated or recognized widely.

Along with the award ceremonies, there will be much more to look forward to by those who love and appreciate literature and thus the Fairway Galle Literary Festival is bound to attract crowds as they have done in previous years.